I can't be totally sure, but I think I'm engaged to be married. For the past seven days I have had a constant companion by the name of Cousin Olga and, in certain Greek families, this constitutes a very serious courtship indeed. And the Boltsises, of which I have somehow become a member, are most assuredly such a family.

A week earlier, Ilias, perfect stranger, fellow biker and scion of Mr and Mrs Boltsis, had rescued me, literally scooping me up from the Athens pavement where I had been sitting, head in hands, rocking gently back and forth. I had been broken by a nine-hour sleepless overnight ferry crossing followed by two hours' negotiating the insane rush hour. Having to navigate using road signs in algebra, fend off constant accusations of being a malaka (accompanied by the coffee-bean shake hand gesture of those early Nescafe ads) and work out why the city seemed to have an abundance of Parthenons served only to hasten my collapse. All I wanted to do was get out of Athens - just another hot, faceless, seething city; the sort of place I had come to detest on this trip.

But Ilias had other ideas. 'Now you come home with me,' he said.

'Dennis Nilsen!' screamed the voice in my head. 'OK,' I whispered meekly, reflecting that getting cut up into little pieces and melted down into glue would be a preferable fate to being alone again on a motorcycle in Athens.

But instead of going to a bedsit with pentagrams carved into black-gloss walls, I am transported to a world I thought existed only in the hackneyed minds of Hollywood scriptwriters. For here's the house, divided into three apartments, where Ilias, his sister and her husband and his parents, live.

And here's Ilias's mother, the matriarch known to all as Mrs Chrysanthi, plonking an enormous plate of moussaka in front of me, flanked by mountains of feta, spinach pies, aubergine, home-made bread and sardines in garlic. I eat it all, except perhaps a bit of garlic, and Mrs Chrysanthi asks Ilias: 'Why Mike not like my food?'

Mrs Chrysanthi is doing my laundry and telling Ilias to introduce me to Cousin Olga. His sister, also called Olga, is making up my room; Cousin Poppy is fussing over me and a succession of the neighbourhood's single women just happen to be passing through the kitchen to say hello. I feel as if I've been scooped out of a raging sea.

Ilias, meanwhile, is phoning all his friends and relaying to me the social programme for the next week and possibly the rest of my life. 'But I was going to leave tomorrow,' I tell him.

'Mike, Mike, Mike,' he says. 'You have to learn how to relax like the Greeks.' And the subject of my departure is closed.

So begins my week of staying put. Ilias and his girlfriend, Litsa, take time off work and we spend our days riding our motorbikes out through the pine forests and along the Sea of Corinth. We stop at their favourite hilltop restaurants and waterside cafes. They take me to see Athens, with its single Parthenon, and to meet all their friends for coffee. I get to know Cousins Olga, Costas and Georgiou, hear about the family's triumphs and tragedies and even learn some Greek. We watch family wedding videos, laugh as Ilias's father sets fire to his trousers with a welding torch and talk away whole afternoons. I feel part of something, no longer just a spectator passing through. By simply not moving, I have travelled much further.

Now my bike is packed and I am saying goodbye. I have been showered with gifts - Greek cookbooks, shoes, worry beads - and Mrs Chrysanthi is saying she considers me her son. Olga looks sad. Ilias reckons I should stay one more week. 'That would be the easiest thing in the world,' I tell him.

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